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Building Blocks on the Cheap

About: I am a hobist with lots of hobies from carpentry to mechanics. There is hardly any thing that i am not interested in.
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My kid is going to be 2 years now. I thought of buying some building blocks for him. So Surfed the kids store for the same. They were asking for the sky for just a hand full of the blocks. I thought, why not make some just by using hard paper. They are just a combination of basic shapes. So I pulled out all my tricks from the days I was practicing engineering drawing and made what you are going to see in subsequent pages.

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Step 1: First Thing First

I made the rough drawings from my head and used powerpoint basic shapes to make the wraparound shapes of the blocks. Wraparound shape are those that can be folded and glued to make the complete shapes. The attached pdf has all the shaped I am using. I took a print and cut out the different shapes.

Traced them on a card paper and cut them out. Now you are ready to fold and glue.

Attachments

Step 2: Make the Cube

The cube is the simplest shape to make. Fold the flaps using a ruler and glue to make the cube

Step 3: Make the Pyramid

Fold the pyramid on the lines and start by gluing the corners.

I had to cut the flap a little to adjust for the folds. Glue on.

Step 4: Make the Cylinder

For the shaped with rounded corners, I had to remove more of the flaps to adjust for the rounded parts. For the cylinder crop the flap that goes with the circle. Just use your fingers or use a dowel to shape the side that is rounded.I did that with hand. Glue on.

Step 5: Make the Right Triangle Block

While making the right triangle block also, you have to crop some of the flaps to adjust for proper folding. Fold and glue

Step 6: Done One Play

You are done with the most complex part of the project. Play with your art works for sometime. You can make some more if you like (have paper or interest). I was out of paper at this point.

Step 7: Done Two Paint

Paint your artwork as you like. I just painted one coat of acrylic color each on each face. You can decorate as you like. They are quite sturdy to be played by a 2 year old, as opposed to my expectation.

I did not take pics of some shapes as I was busy shaping/holding them after gluing.